A yr in the past, two males met by probability in San Francisco’s quiet Glen Park neighborhood — an encounter that inside minutes destroyed each of their lives.
It’s been a yr of anguish for numerous kinfolk and group members. And for San Francisco, a yr of failing to be taught the teachings of that Memorial Day morning.
At about 8:20 a.m., 94-year-old Leo Hainzl, took what could be his final stroll along with his canine, Rip, to Glen Canyon. He crossed paths with a person who’d slept on the streets of the neighborhood for years and had usually menaced passersby via a fog of psychological sickness. Police mentioned Peter Rocha, now 54, attacked Hainzl with a stick, inflicting him to fall, hit his head and die inside hours at a hospital.
A yr later, Rocha apparently stays in that fog.
He languishes at the moment in a County Jail cell, trapped in an all-too-common purgatory. A decide mentioned he’s too mentally sick to face trial, ordering him in December to a locked state psychiatric hospital for compelled remedy that might make him effectively sufficient to face a decide and jury.
However California’s psychiatric hospitals don’t have any accessible beds. And so Rocha waits behind bars, the place medicine is non-obligatory. Extremely, he’s on a ready listing of 1,523 individuals — all of them incarcerated and in the identical state of affairs.
Then there’s this: If a state hospital finally restores Rocha’s competency, he shall be despatched again to County Jail, the place he’s free to refuse remedy.
The hurt compounds, and nobody advantages. The longer the wait drags on, the weaker the case in opposition to Rocha might get. Witnesses’ recollections fade or they transfer or die. Reaching a decision within the case turns into much less potential with every passing month, and hope for Rocha’s restoration fades, too.
“We as a household are infuriated,” mentioned Ramiro Rocha, Peter’s youthful brother by two years. He and their mom dwell out of state and haven’t obtained a cellphone name from Peter in months.
“He’s in a psychotic state proper now,” Ramiro Rocha continued. “He wants medicine. I’m sure he’s not taking it. If he was in a psychological well being facility, they’d ensure he will get the correct medicine that he deserves.”
Leo Hainzl deserved so significantly better. So did Peter Rocha. Their encounter in Glen Canyon was a tragedy officers ought to have seen coming — and may have tried far tougher to forestall.
Rocha grew to become homeless in 2004 and slept for years in Glen Park, usually in a planter field outdoors St. John Catholic College on Chenery Avenue. He carried crutches slung over his shoulder that he waved at strangers.
When Rocha threatened his neighbors, police would reply. They’d provide assist. He’d decline. They usually’d depart. Once more and repeatedly.
That’s, till Might 25, 2020, when police booked him into jail and metropolis prosecutors quickly charged him with homicide, assault with a lethal weapon and elder abuse. And there he’s sat ever since, a logo of our supposedly progressive metropolis and state and their profound failures to handle twin homelessness and psychological well being crises.
Rocha’s plunge into despair in Glen Park belied a contented childhood within the Outer Mission, his brother mentioned. Their mom was a nurse, their father a graphic artist whose jelly-bean mosaics of celebrities corresponding to Elvis and Queen Elizabeth had been so good that the Jelly Stomach manufacturing unit in Fairfield displayed them and despatched him on journeys world wide to advertise them.
The Rochas divorced when Peter was in his early teenagers, and his father died of Lou Gehrig’s illness in 2012.
Peter was “your all-American child,” his brother mentioned, standard with ladies and a superb scholar. He served within the Marine Corps for 4 years after graduating from Jefferson Excessive in Daly Metropolis. After his navy service, he took up jujitsu and opened a studio in Berkeley.
His brother and mom moved to Phoenix in 1994, holding in contact with Rocha principally by way of cellphone calls, whilst a few of them grew to become unusual and alarming. Rocha would ask his brother whether or not sure occasions had actually occurred and appeared to query his personal reminiscence and notion.
“He mentioned, ‘I’m attempting to determine this out. I believe I’m shedding my f—ing thoughts,’” his brother recalled. “He knew issues had been slipping, and he didn’t know what to do about it.”
Rocha bounced between residences. He advised his household he’d repeatedly sought assist for his psychological sickness, together with at a veterans hospital, solely to run into roadblocks. His brother isn’t certain whether or not he was ever formally identified or prescribed medicine.
Earlier than the Glen Canyon encounter, Rocha had no legal document.
Ultimately, he grew to become homeless. He now not had a cellphone. His brother and mom would go years with out listening to from him. They felt helpless. Beneath the state’s strict privateness legal guidelines, they’d no proper to see his medical data or discover out if he was receiving care. Ramiro Rocha mentioned his mom would inform him to go to San Francisco and save his brother.
“She’d encourage me to go, saying, ‘You’ve received to go discover him,’” he mentioned. “Hypothetically, what if I discovered him? Now what do I do with him? Do I handcuff him? No, I could possibly be arrested.
“I’m not an expert,” he continued. “There’s nothing I can do.”
So that they stayed in contact by way of cellphone as a lot as they may. And continued to hearken to Peter describe the visions in his fraying thoughts. Together with that “nasty, nasty giant canines” within the neighborhood had been out to assault him.
If Peter Rocha was a fixture of Glen Park, Leo Hainzl was, too. He’d lived in the identical brown home on Sussex Avenue since 1967, rising tomatoes below his entrance steps and proudly owning a succession of canines that he walked for at the very least 6 miles each day, usually within the canyon.
Hainzl was born in Austria. Throughout World Warfare II, he grew to become a “displaced individual,” despatched to a resettlement camp in Germany, in line with the Glen Park Affiliation. In 1953, he moved to Melbourne, Australia, to work as a farmer earlier than immigrating to San Francisco seven years later. He had two transient marriages, and neighbors don’t suppose he had any kids.
He labored as a welder and ran a building firm earlier than retiring, nonetheless holding a storage filled with instruments. He was youthful and gregarious even in his 90s, usually noticed hanging off ladders or climbing on his roof, fixing his house.
Neighbor Simon Rowe mentioned Hainzl was all the time in high type when Rowe’s 80-year-old mom came over, lighting up when she’d stroll by.
“He hadn’t misplaced his spark for vigorous dialog,” Rowe laughed. “He all the time had a twinkle in his eye. We must always all be so fortunate to be so engaged and very important at that ripe previous age.”
Hainzl learn each phrase of the Economist every week, underlining the components that him as he sat on his entrance porch along with his canine. He constructed a metallic holder subsequent to his studying spot for his beloved cans of Purple Bull.
“On the finish of his life, I swear he solely drank Purple Bull and ate solely steak,” mentioned his next-door neighbor, Caitlin Steele, whose household purchased Hainzl’s home and is transforming it.
They plan to maneuver on this summer time. Rip was taken in by one other household with youngsters.
A big memorial service for Hainzl wasn’t potential, a results of the dawning pandemic, however a few dozen neighbors gathered in entrance of his home just a few weeks after his demise to share tales.
Hainzl’s killing additionally prompted neighborhood conversations about why police and different metropolis officers did so little to handle their repeated experiences about Rocha.
Shawn Zovod referred to as 911 5 months earlier than Rocha allegedly killed Hainzl. She, too, was strolling within the canyon when Rocha approached, complaining about canines just like the one she was strolling.
She mentioned Rocha advised her she wanted a beating and mentioned, “I must be the one to do it.” By the point police arrived, Rocha had wandered off. Officers advised her they knew Rocha and that he had declined affords of providers.
Zovod mentioned Rocha threatened different neighbors with canines, together with an 89-year-old girl. She alerted Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who added Rocha to his listing of the individuals in District Eight who most want psychological well being care. The purpose of the listing is to spur town to intervene with support, but it surely doesn’t appear to be working.
A yr in the past, 22 individuals had been on the listing. Now, there are 28. Few appear to get off the listing, until they die.
A central drawback is that town and state don’t have sufficient early intervention packages and remedy accessible for mentally sick individuals who know they need assistance. Authorities are additionally reluctant to compel individuals like Rocha into remedy, even when they deteriorate a lot that they now not understand they’re sick.
Beneath the state’s authorized normal, individuals might be held involuntarily for remedy if they’re deemed a hazard to themselves or others or are gravely disabled. The argument in opposition to compelling remedy is defending individuals’s civil liberties, however to a few of Rocha’s neighbors, leaving him to sleep in a planter field and threaten neighbors over obvious hallucinations appeared merciless and dangerous.
Usually, solely a tragedy can transfer the federal government to compel individuals with profound psychological sickness into sustained remedy which will take away the fog. However even in these excessive circumstances, we lack the hospital beds.
“It’s probably the most dystopian model of progressive politics,” Mandelman mentioned. “We’re all about civil liberties, however we don’t make the investments in primary providers for sick individuals. We’ve this totally destructive model of liberty, about being free from issues. However your freedom to dwell a good life with dignity? We apparently don’t care about that in any respect.”
When a non-public psychological well being hospital with 117 acute psychiatric beds opens in Sacramento subsequent month, it will likely be the primary new psychiatric hospital within the state in 30 years, mentioned Sheree Lowe, vice chairman of behavioral well being for the California Hospital Affiliation. Twenty-five counties don’t have any inpatient psychiatric providers in any respect, she mentioned.
This all stems from California’s determination many years in the past to shut many psychiatric hospitals that had been seen as inhumane and transfer care into the group. However the state failed on that second promise.
“If we as a state put extra of our time and power and assets into prevention and early intervention, we might not have this backlog of people who find themselves being criminalized as a result of they’re sick,” Lowe mentioned. “We don’t criminalize anyone as a result of they’ve diabetes or congestive coronary heart failure, however we appear to wish to do it for individuals who have a mind sickness.”
Alex Barnard, an assistant professor of sociology at New York College, has studied California’s legal guidelines and describes them as “abandoning individuals into autonomy.”
“The truth of the state of California proper now,” he mentioned, “is there are lots of people who’ve been so repeatedly failed by the social service system and the psychological well being system that they do want the next stage of care that isn’t accessible to them.”
When COVID-19 struck, San Francisco Mayor London Breed instantly requested the state and federal governments for five,000 extra hospital beds. The psychological well being emergency requires a few of this similar urgency.
It additionally calls for that town add extra road disaster groups to assist individuals like Rocha as a substitute of counting on police, who’re ill-equipped to deal with such circumstances. And we want extra locations for the groups to take individuals — like a round the clock disaster facility in Tuscon staffed by medical professionals providing a spread of providers from a living-room-style hangout space to inpatient remedy beds.
“Arizona doesn’t have the identical kind of deal with dangerousness of their remedy normal. They’ve made it way more medically primarily based,” mentioned John Snook, govt director of the Therapy Advocacy Middle, a nationwide group pushing for higher psychological well being care. “There isn’t that synthetic barrier of, ‘Oh, there’s nothing we will do till that individual’s harmful,’ which has been used as an excuse for avoiding care in California.”
It’s necessary to notice that the overwhelming majority of mentally sick individuals won’t ever be violent. However in some circumstances, compelling remedy can hold individuals from deteriorating to the purpose they’re harmful to themselves or others. That’s certainly a extra compassionate reply than ready for against the law after which jailing them indefinitely with no care.
“In case you’re speaking about somebody whose psychosis was so extreme that they acted out in such a violent method after which they’re sitting in a jail cell presumably with out remedy, it’s exhausting to think about a extra terrible state of affairs,” Snook mentioned.
“It’s a nightmare.”
So how will this nightmare finish?
A spokesperson for the state’s psychiatric hospitals declined to say how lengthy individuals declared incompetent to face trial are usually on the ready listing for care. However Rocha’s lawyer within the metropolis Public Defender’s Workplace, Will Helvestine, mentioned the state’s present estimate for Rocha receiving a hospital mattress is August.
That’s six months after a deadline set by a San Francisco decide.
“We’ve misplaced months and months of doubtless invaluable remedy time, and we’re no nearer than we had been final summer time to getting Peter the remedy he wants,” Helvestine mentioned.
The lawyer mentioned he’s grateful to Glen Park neighbors who’ve reached out to ask about Rocha’s well-being. “The group appears to know,” he mentioned, “that whereas Mr. Hainzl’s demise was undoubtedly a tragedy, the lack or unwillingness of the state to correctly deal with Peter is a tragedy in its personal proper.”
Ramiro Rocha mentioned he was shocked to be taught so many individuals like his brother are ready for a hospital mattress. He believes each Hainzl and his brother are victims of a damaged system.
“This was 100% preventable,” he mentioned. “I don’t know what it’s going to take for residents to face up and say, ‘Sufficient is sufficient.’ These individuals need assistance.”
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight seems Sundays and Wednesdays. Electronic mail: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf Instagram: @heatherknightsf
